The Raft (Alan Mills, HarperCollins, $29.95 tpb, ISBN 0732280443, February) HH

A long-running comic series about a mythical superhero called Zardan has been the life’s work of middle-aged Martin Napier. Devastated when he finds out the series is being axed, Napier agrees to his wife’s request to take a family holiday on a property in isolated Far North Queensland. However their arrival coincides with that of a cyclone and torrential rains soon turn the relaxing farm into a natural disaster zone. In light of recent world events, the floods and destruction that ensue are all too easily conjured in the mind’s eye, but the twist is that Napier and his wife and daughter become stranded for days in a volatile situation on a rooftop with a truckie, a policeman and a murder suspect also seeking refuge from the flood, is less plausible. The story is told in flashbacks from Napier’s hospital bed, where he appears defeated by his experiences and struggles with depression. Although flashbacks can often increase suspense, juxtaposing seemingly idyllic times with the aftermath of a tragedy, in this case Napier’s depression is more dreary than ominous in tone and lends both past and present a gloomy sameness that is only occasionally broken by exciting action sequences.

Sophie Groom is manager of Dragon Books—St George, Sydney

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2005, Thorpe-Bowker